It is well known that personal computers (PCs) can provide users with access to a vast array of information and services via the Internet. Conventional PC access to the Internet, however, suffers some limitations such as: 1) the need to first establish a dial-up connection to an Internet service provider (ISP); 2) the need to access a particular information provider (e.g., an electronic mail server or a financial reporting service) to learn if there is information of particular interest to the user; 3) the need to be at the PC location to access such information using the PC keyboard and to see the information on the PC monitor; and 4) the need for the PC user to be relatively sophisticated in the use of the PC and the Internet to get the desired information or services. One of the known approaches that has become popular in overcoming some of these limitations is the incorporation of Internet access functionality into a television set or a CATV set top box. Such implementations are commonly referred to as PCTV or WEB TV. A major limitation of the PCTV approach to simplifying Internet access is that it does not use a PC that is already in the residence or other location in need of user-friendly information or services. The PCTV offering is typically much less capable than contemporary PC hardware and likely to be out of date with rapidly advancing PC technology.
Another example of known attempts to integrate television and PC computing is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,790,201, entitled: "Television and Computer Capability Integration." This patent discloses a coupler for selectively choosing one of two user interfaces to a computer. A primary interface consists of a conventional CRT or other computer monitor, keyboard, mouse, joystick, etc. A secondary interface consists of a television set and additional input devices such as keyboard, mouse, joystick, etc. The primary interface allows the user to use the computer in a conventional manner--presumably while seated in front of the CRT monitor. Selecting the secondary interface allows the user to use the computer with a conventional television set as a monitor and the additional input devices--presumably while seated in front of the television. Only one of the two interfaces is enabled at any particular time. Thus, this disclosure does not allow simultaneous viewing of the television with computer interaction. Furthermore, there is no possibility of having the computer inform the user of the occurrence of telephony/Internet related events while the user is watching television and not using the secondary user interface.
Another area of consumer communications services achieving increasing user acceptance is enhanced telephone features such as caller ID, call waiting, call forwarding and network based voice messaging. Although these features are useful in their present offerings their usefulness and convenience is limited by the method of accessing them via a telephone and viewing them, in the case of caller ID, with a display associated with the telephone set itself. Mechanisms have become available to display caller ID information on a TV screen such as: "TV Messenger" from TriNexus or "TI 3000 Caller ID on TV" from Palco Telecom (both in Canada). These mechanisms enable displaying incoming call information on the television screen but provide no mechanism for the television viewer to interact with the system other than to access the telephone directly.
Yet another area of emerging communications technology is the use of the Internet for voice communications commonly referred to as "Internet telephony (IT)." The prevailing method of offering such services is through dial-up connections to a service provider that essentially uses the Internet as a long-distance network for phone conversations. Two limitations of contemporary IT services are: 1) the need to dial a local telephone number before dialing the eventual destination; and 2) the possibility that the user may not know ahead of time if a particular destination can be reached via the selected IT service provider.
Because of the limitations and independent operation of the aforementioned systems it is desirable to provide a new system configuration that enhances the accessibility and user friendliness of the individual service offerings and provides new services based on the functional combination of the separate systems.